While Everyone’s Watching UN Budget Cuts, Two USGs Are Acting With Total Impunity and No One’s Paying Attention
As all eyes at the United Nations remain glued to budget slashes and the highly publicized UN80 staffing and structure review, two Under-Secretary-Generals (USGs) are quietly bulldozing every rule, principle, and safeguard that underpins international civil service and getting away with it.
At the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a recent UNAT order (Order No. 2024-591) pulls back the curtain on a shocking abuse of authority by the newly appointed Secretary-General of ISA.
On 1 January 2025, she opened her term with a promising inaugural statement:
“We stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us, leaders who have made the ISA into the steadfast institution it is today… In my first 100 days, I will focus on listening and learning.”
Listening was the last thing she did. Within days, ISA’s new Secretary-General tore through UN rules, trampled institutional safeguards, and made it clear that accountability had no place in her administration.
Six staff members (a mix of P-3s, P-4s, a D-1, and a D-2) who had signed official letters of appointment in December 2024, set to begin their roles on 1 January 2025 under fixed-term two-year contracts, saw their contracts immediately terminated. Make no mistake about it. The staff had already assumed duties and were behind their desks for a few days when the letters arrived. They were dismissed within the first week of the new USG taking office on the 1st of January 2025.
Yes, you read that right.
On 2 January, the new Secretary-General issued letters to all six informing them that ISA would be “unable to complete the onboarding processes” of their appointments. To paper over what amounts to a breach of contract and a violation of established norms of administrative justice, the Administration offered a legally meaningless promise: that the terminated staff would be ‘automatically shortlisted’ for future vacancies: a statement devoid of enforceability, accountability, or fairness.
This was a direct breach of the Organization’s obligations under the UN Charter and Staff Regulations. The unilateral nullification of valid contracts, without process or explanation, stripped staff members of their rights and undermined the core principles of international civil service
The UNAT has repeatedly affirmed that a unilateral withdrawal of a duly accepted offer of appointment, absent cause, due process, or consent, is unlawful and constitutes an abuse of authority (see, e.g., Wang v. Secretary-General of the United Nations, Judgment No. 2012-UNAT-247; Appellee v. ISA, 2024-UNAT-591). The arbitrary nullification of valid appointments undermines the integrity of the international civil service and violates principles enshrined in Article 101 of the UN Charter
And it gets worse.
When the staff submitted their urgent motions to the Joint Appeals Board (JAB) (ISA’s first-instance tribunal) they surely didn’t expect that, almost in parallel, the new Secretary-General had quietly dismantled the very tribunal tasked with reviewing her conduct.
Within days of assuming office and just as the challenges to her decisions were being filed, she eliminated the JAB altogether, preemptively blocking any legal scrutiny and effectively erasing the very mechanism meant to review her actions. With their claims still pending, the tribunal vanished leaving them with no legal avenue and no institutional safeguard.
Let that sink in: The ISA Secretary-General responded to a legal challenge against her administration by dismantling the very body that would adjudicate it.
By 7 January, the JAB had become non-functional, its mandate suspended, its duty abandoned. And just like that, while six staff members waited for legal redress, the institution shut the courtroom doors on them and tossed the keys.
Meanwhile, ISA’s Secretary-General moved quickly to fill the very positions she had just vacated, undermining any possibility of reinstatement and preempting the outcome of ongoing legal proceedings. This calculated move frustrated the administration of justice and violated the principle of reinstatement, denying affected staff the chance to be restored to their rightful posts.
But she wasn’t finished.
Five weeks after dismantling the JAB, she appointed a new JAB chair: Martha Halfeld, a former UNAT judge, and notably, a fellow Brazilian. Conflict of interest? Perception of impartiality?
Apparently none of that matters when you’re building an accountability-free regime.
One of the six dismissed staff members, the former Chief of Staff at D-1 level, filed a separate motion (Order No. 2024-592 (Bourrel), exposing an even darker dimension.
The motion exposed a deeply alarming act by the Administration: under the direct authority of the new Secretary-General, ISA ordered the abrupt disconnection of the Chief of Staff’s home security system in Jamaica, without notice while she and her daughter were still living there. The former Chief of Staff describes discovering that ISA had instructed the private security company to visit her home and disable the system. As described in her sworn affidavit and the UNAT order, she stated the measure was “designed purely to harm and cause distress, and represented an assault on an international civil servant’s duty of care”.
And while this chaos unfolded, the ISA Secretary-General stood before the Thirtieth Session of the Council on 17 March 2025 and delivered this gem of a statement:
“I have taken steps to improve internal communication and introduced measures conducive to a more positive and supportive work environment… [including] strengthened internal justice mechanisms to uphold institutional accountability… Member States can be assured that all actions taken have fully complied with institutional procedures… and have been executed with due process and transparency.“
But the UN Appeals Tribunal saw through the façade. In direct contradiction to her narrative of transparency and strengthened justice, UNAT laid bare the truth:
“However, I note with concern that the JAB was dismantled temporarily without prior warning given to ISA staff members and with no reasons provided by the Administration… denying the staff members access to justice in the interim… the temporary void rendered meaningless the JAB suspension of action mechanism.“
So much for strengthened justice mechanisms. The ISA Secretary-General was publicly promising accountability while privately dismantling the only tribunal capable of holding her accountable
Just last week, UNAT issued another order on a related case, showing how the administration had rushed to fill one of the terminated positions ensuring the claimant couldn’t be reinstated. A textbook move to obstruct justice before it could take its course.
But this story of abuse and concealment doesn’t end at the ISA. It circles back to New York right into the office of another USG who has just made headlines for all the wrong reasons. (For full background, please see my earlier articles on Certioraris and LinkedIn detailing the Hosali case and the disturbing patterns it reveals inside UN senior leadership)
In Judgment No. 2025-UNAT-1523, the UN Appeals Tribunal found entirely in favor of Ms. Mita Hosali, reversing the flawed ruling of the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT). The judgment goes far beyond confirming procedural violations: it reveals a sustained pattern of bias, racial discrimination, and manipulation of the selection process by the USG for Global Communications, in clear breach of the principles of impartiality, equity, and fair competition that underpin international administrative law.
Ms. Hosali, a long-serving woman of color from the Global South, had competed for a D-2 position. The USG leading the panel manipulated the process to favor an external white male candidate, even going as far as to frame Hosali’s years of internal UN experience as a liability.
The USG chairing the interview panel recorded the following in the competency-based interview report:
“Recycling people in UN is problematic. Sometimes needs external.“
Recycling?? Since when did internal UN staff become disposable waste?? And this coming from the very person tasked with managing the UN’s global communications strategy??
Another gem from the interview evaluation sheets:
“Sucking up”
That’s how the panel interpreted Ms. Hosali’s mention of the USG’s strategy during the interview. A comment UNAT rightly flagged as deeply subjective, speculative, and entirely inappropriate.
The tribunal found interalia, that:
“The Panel made a subjective assessment based on personal opinions rather than objective factors… comments that contrast with the Panel’s assessment of the Selected Candidate that he was objective and beyond reproach.”
So a male Brit is “objective,” while an experienced woman of color is “recycled” and “sucking up.” How’s that for an equal playing field?
UNAT also flagged the lack of justification for the selection, noting:
“This Tribunal expresses its serious concern about the lack of a sufficient record of the reasons supporting the choice… It is questionable how the Selected Candidate’s gender as male was considered a positive element in a department where males were more represented than females…”
Let’s be clear: the UNAT judgment is final and binding. So here’s the real question: what happens next?
How will the Secretary-General of the United Nations hold the USG for Global Communications accountable for the blatant discrimination and abuse of authority now officially confirmed in this ruling?
More to the point: how are we, as staff and observers, expected to trust the integrity of the new 14-member UN80 task force, the very team now reviewing staffing structures, post reductions, and potential job relocations when two USGs are behaving with unchecked impunity?
If you can dismantle a tribunal to avoid legal scrutiny in Kingston, and label experienced women of color as “recycled” in New York, then what does that say about the culture of impunity at the very top of the UN system?
You can’t restructure a broken system using the very hands that broke it.